Discovering the Past
by Ginny-Rose95
Summary: Leo has been hounding Annabeth for weeks to tell him details on her MIA boyfriend, Percy Jackson.Annabeth has shown reluctance to doing so but no matter, the God Apollo has his ways... Another        reads                story.
1. Prologue

"Please Annabeth!" Annabeth growled in frustration, hand itching towards her sheathed dagger as she momentarily considered skewering the obnoxious boy. Leo Valdez had been a Latin thorn in her side since he had come back from his quest and begun the building of the war-ship. At first he was okay, a little chatty and definitely not the brightest in the box and if it wasn't for the constant swirl of action that was his hands, she would have assumed with his mischievous grin and twinkling trouble-maker eyes that he was a son of Hermes, but not too bad.

That was until he learned of Percy.

Of course, he knew of Percy, she had greeted him for the first time demanding to know where Percy was after all, but he didn't know how much the camp seemed to worship the powerful demi-god until after his quest. Of course, Leo Valdez was a curious boy and as she was none other than Percy's girlfriend, she was deemed as the go-to girl for answers to satisfy his curiosity. The first questions were simple and easy to answer but they'd grown more and more personal and more and more annoying. She had stopped answering but still he persisted.

"Oh come on! Please!" she wheeled around then, bronze dagger in hand and glared murderously at the boy.

"NO!" Leo gulped audibly, eyes nearly cross-eyed as he tried to stare down the blade. Leo was not bad in a fight, but his hesitancy at drawing a weapon against someone who was not always or obviously an enemy and lingering reluctancy to hit a girl left him at a constant disadvantage whenever he pushed Annabeth too far.

"Ahem…." A quiet, clear, deep voice interrupted the pair and they were greeted by the towering figure of Chiron, the camp's leader. He clutched a box tightly to his chest and his tail swished in veiled annoyance. He stared pointedly at Annabeth until, with a loud enough sigh to worry Leo, she sheathed her blade. Chiron smiled. "Now that the fight has ended, I have something that will interest the both of you, should you follow me into the pavilion.

"What is it?" Normally, Chiron would never show a camper something before the rest but he slipped the box around and 'accidently' let Annabeth gaze at the title. She gasped quietly, "Di immortales, you are joking?" Chiron shook his head and began to trot into the pavilion, not waiting for them to follow.

"What is it?" Leo immediately asked but Annabeth ignored him. He would, after all, find out his answers soon enough. They continued in a huffed silence into the pavilion before Leo took his space beside Jason and Piper and Annabeth went to sit by her long term satyr friend, Grover, and a dark haired, pale-skinned boy with frighteningly dark clothes all designed with some form of a skeleton.

Thalia, the most beautiful girl in Leo's opinion, sat a table away from her friends, in a seat of honor with the rest of the hunters. She stared intently at Chiron and after a few moments, Leo followed. Chiron was still holding the box but now a tall, blonde man with a large, bright grin stood beside him. He gestured for the box and as Chiron held it out for him, he grasped something within and pulled out a hard backed, relatively thin book. He turned back to the crowd of campers, most impatient from having been pulled from their activities and grinned again.

"Hello campers!" He smiled exuberantly and Leo wondered if he had eaten some sort of giant flashbulb. "Now that my father has so kindly relinquished the whole 'no speaking to mortals' act, I can give you these!" he brandished the book and although Leo was confused, most of the camp gasped in recognition.

"As our favorite camper has gone missing and a strange one has appeared," he winked conspicuously at Jason and Leo watched as his friend sank low into his chair as everyone turned to look at him. "Although we now know that to be merely a trick of my stepmother…" the man added as an afterthought before shaking his head and returning to the topic, "I have decided it would be in everyone's best interests to read about our lovely Percy's quests!" Leo was one of the many that laughed at the statement and even Piper giggled behind her hand.

"Any objections?" Annabeth looked like she was about to make one but before she could speak, Apollo (Leo assumed anyway) beamed at the group.

"No? Wonderful! I'll read the first chapter!" And on that decisive note, the erratic god cracked open the new binding of the book and began to read. "Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief…." Leo settled down, a grin barely concealed on his impish face, and waited for his questions to be answered.

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><p>So, another one of those blah blah blah reads blah blah blah stories. Just kind of wrote it down for fun might stay as a one shot. If you liked it and you want me to continue, just say so or something =D<p> 


	2. I Vaporize My PreAlgebra Teacher'

"**I Accidentally Vaporize my Pre-Algebra Teacher" **Apollo read and Leo smirked amongst the snickers in the pavilion. Judging from the title, he had the feeling that he would like Percy.

"**Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood.** **If you're reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is:** **close this book right now. Believe what ever lie your mom or dad told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life."**

"Prissy's giving _advice_?" A large, muscular girl with stringy brown hair scoffed. "The world's ending." Some mean snickers reverberated around her table but a terrifying glare from Annabeth and Jason's hot sister succeeded in quieting the crowd and Leo turned back to Apollo who resumed his reading with a glee unprecedented.

"**Being a half-blood is dangerous. It's scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways."**

"Well," one kid pointed out towards the rude girl from earlier, a mischievous glint in his eye, "Percy's probably the best to give advice for that." A few snickers went around but most seemed too nervous around the thundering atmosphere to laugh. Leo fell into the latter category after seeing Thalia's dangerous version of quieting the kids. He liked his eyebrows intact.

"**If you're a normal kid, reading this because you think it's fiction, great. Read on. I envy you for being able to believe that none of this ever happened."**

"He sounds a bit condescending doesn't he?" Piper whispered quietly, obviously trying not to be heard above the level of the other rumbles of comments. Jason nodded and Leo agreed silently, because Thalia was looking at them and he didn't want to look stupid by randomly shaking his head.

"**But if you recognize yourself in these pages—if you feel something stirring inside—stop reading immediately. "**

"Too late!" Leo didn't mean for it to come out that loud, but a few snickers went around the group and Piper smacked her hand to her head as Thalia and Annabeth both turned to glare.

"Way to go," Jason muttered as Thalia stood up and walked over to them, Leo blushed slightly and turned to glare at his friend.

"Shut up!" He murmured, straightening up and hastily brushing his hair with his fingers as Thalia came over. She shot one, slightly amused, slightly incredulous look at Leo and sat down besides Jason, pushing Leo to the side.

"I'm sitting here so you behave," she told him, and Leo took it to mean that she cared enough for him not to get hurt by an angry, unbalanced Annabeth.

"**You might be one of us. And once you know that, it's only a matter of time before **_**they **_**sense it too, and they'll come for you. Don't say I didn't warn you."**

"You didn't warn me," the pale boy besides Annabeth spoke up, one hand lifting to brush his hair casually from his eyes, the silver skull ring glinting in the sun. Annabeth glared at the boy.

"Shut up Nico!" she snarled and the boy smirked ever so slightly.

"Make me Annabeth." She glared and her hand shot to her dagger, mirrored by his shooting towards his oddly short scabbard. Apollo coughed loudly and both sat back down. Leo noted not to mess with the oddly gothic boy, Nico. Anyone who could withstand Annabeth's fury was not one he wanted to deal with.

"**My name is Percy Jackson.** **I'm twelve years old."**

"_How _old?" Piper squeaked, eyes wide. Leo couldn't resist.

"He said twelve, princess, didn't you hear?" He teased. Piper was probably the one girl at camp that he could tease without getting gutted by a dagger, sliced by a sword, electrocuted by lightening, shot with an arrow, gagged with designer perfume that smelled like skunk, run over by a Pegasus (or a herd on one memorable occasion), strangled by various plants, or stabbed through with a spear, and he took full advantage of it.

Piper glared, "I _heard_ perfectly fine Leo. It was more of the fact that he was only _twelve _years old when he went on his first quest!" She huffed and after a moment's hesitation, Jason put a comforting, just 'friendly' arm around her. Leo wondered if anyone in the entire courtyard was as oblivious as the two of them.

Annabeth, who had been relatively quiet after the incident with Nico, spoke up. "It was more of an emergency quest, and Percy was the only one that _could _go. It explains why in the book but he didn't have a choice in the matter." Piper still looked as if the age was simply inexcusable and Apollo (quite wisely in Leo's opinion) began to read again before she could have a chance to lecture the world on proper child-god care.

"**Until a **_**few **_**months ago, I was a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York."**

"Eurgh," Piper made a disgusted face and Leo and Jason both shot her sympathetic looks.

"One of the schools your dad sent you to?" Jason asked quietly, which Leo would admit, was more tactful than if he would have addressed her. Piper nodded.

"Disgusting little brats went there, there was this one girl, complete kleptomaniac," Leo made no attempt at pointing out the irony in the statement despite his extreme desire to do so. Pipes was his friend and he knew how sensitive she was about those times that her father thought she was a thief, "Threw her lunch all over everyone constantly! Ketchup and peanut butter! Ick!"

Grover, Annabeth's furry satyr friend, shot Piper an incredulous look.

"_You_ knew Nancy Bobofit?" Piper nodded, and Grover's eyes widened. "When did you go to Yancy?"

"When I was thirteen," Grover mouthed the word before vigorously shaking his head.

"One year! I could've waited one year to go to Yancy and snagged Piper instead of Percy! Could you imagine how life would be? Piper wouldn't have made me go through all the things Percy did," he smiled dreamily and many kids laughed.

"Yes, but I don't think she would've been able to save all of Olympus either!" Annabeth stated, glaring at the boy. Leo didn't think that was very fair. After all, Piper had done a great deal to save Tia Callida when Annabeth was off sulking and Percy was the gods know where. Sadly, Annabeth terrified them all and no one dared to contradict her and the whole crowd fell into an awkward silence until Apollo spoke again.

"**Am I a troubled kid?"**

"Yes," several kids muttered surprisingly including Thalia and not even Annabeth contradicted it, a small half-smile, half-exasperated expression gracing her lips. Leo had to admit, when Annabeth wasn't pants-crappingly terrifying, she was almost sweet looking.

"**Yeah. You could say that."**

Leo and several others laughed at that. He could appreciate a man who know his own faults and could laugh at them. Where would the world be without the smart alecs of the world? He shuddered to imagine.

"**I could start at any point in my short miserable life to prove it, but things really started going bad last May, when our sixth-grade class took a field trip to Manhattan— twenty-eight mental-case kids and two teachers on a yellow school bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at ancient Greek and Roman stuff."**

"Sounds like fun," Jason stated and Leo stared at him, shocked.

"Fun? Fun, Jason? Dear gods what has become of you?" He stood up and pointed an accusing finger at his friend causing an eye roll and a hand to reach out and push him back down to his seat.

"Yeah, it would be interesting," Leo mouthed the words, putting a hand to his heart and pretend fainting, as if the statement had mortally wounded him. Thalia rolled her eyes and pulled him back down into his seat. Leo shot her a grin.

"Can't resist me?" He asked half teasingly, reaching out to put a friendly arm around her. With time-honed reflexes, Thalia pushed his hand away and glared at the overly excitable boy.

"If you like that hand, I suggest you keep on your side, Flameo." She retorted. Leo grinned.

"Flameo, huh? Like a hot Romeo?" Thalia rolled her eyes and didn't deem him with a response, but Leo knew it was only a matter of time until she admitted her attraction towards him, he just knew it.

"**I know—it sounds like torture."**

"Most Yancy field trips are," Piper stated, earning a laugh from the campers and an odd but amused look from Apollo who couldn't quite disguise the amusement from his voice as he continued to read.

"**Most Yancy field trips were."**

Several people laughed at Piper's 'oh' face and one of the Stoll brothers – Leo didn't know which, jumped up dramatically, pointing a tanned finger at Piper accusingly.

"She thinks like Percy! It's only a matter of time before her brain begins to rot, we must save her brother!" He looked towards his brother who nodded gravely and together they approached her. Leo was too busy laughing to stop them but Jason, always a hair's width away from Piper, slid a hand between the tricksters and Piper.

"Pax vobis molesti fabri," he told him, voice accenting the Latin words. The brothers blinked in shock, outreaching hands falling to their sides as they tried to discern the language. Leo laughed again, hands reaching his sides as he doubled over. The Stolls, after confirming that Jason would not tell them and that Piper had no idea, rounded on him.

"Do _you_ understand?" The way they said it made it seem that Leo was the last person to be able to understand but Leo had spent enough time with Jason (and more time irritating him that Piper) to understand what he'd spoken so he smirked at them.

"Sure I do, but I ain't about to tell you, that'd ruin the surprise!" He leaned back, hands crossing behind his eyes. The whole thing might have been more impressive if he hadn't leaned too far and landed quite smartly on his butt. The Stolls and all the other campers laughed as Piper and Jason took pity and helped him back up besides the laughing Thalia.

"He said 'Peace, you trouble makers' now quiet down!" Chiron stared disapprovingly at the campers, "I thought you'd be able to behave yourselves in the presence of a god," the campers muttered their apologies in tandem and the Stolls returned to their seats reluctantly.

"Culos tonto," Leo murmured, pouting slightly as he straightened up. Piper shot him a stern look.

"Watch your mouth," Leo stuck his tongue out in response and Apollo continued reading.

"**But Mr. Brunner, our Latin teacher, was leading this trip, so I had hopes."**

"Mr. Brunner? That's what Percy called Chiron at first isn't it?" Annabeth spoke up and Grover nodded.

"Chiron was your teacher?" Jason sounded surprised and Leo had to agree. It seemed like it would be difficult for Chiron to disguise himself well enough to not raise suspicions, no matter the all-powerful mist that fooled mortals.

"Yeah," Grover said, "He does so whenever it's a really powerful kid, like big three material," he explained. "Eases the process, monsters notice them more."

"Wait…" Piper said slowly, "If that's the case, why wasn't Chiron there when Jason was with us at the Wilderness School?" Grover shook his head and Chiron took up the question.

"Because my dear, by the time Jason had – uh- _arrived_ at the school, Gaea's servant had noticed you and it was too late for my assistance." Chiron was careful not to mention how Jason had come to the camp but Leo knew Piper was embarrassed. It was still sometimes hard for both of them to realize they hadn't really spent all that time with Jason like they thought they did.

"**Mr. Brunner was this middle-aged guy in a motorized wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee. You wouldn't think he'd be cool, but he told stories and jokes and let us play games in class. He also had this awesome collection of Roman armor and weapons, so he was the only teacher whose class didn't put me to sleep."**

"Ah, that's so sweet," one of the daughters of Aphrodite crooned and Leo couldn't tell whether they were joking or being serious but he still winced on behalf of the missing boy.

"**I hoped the trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once I wouldn't get in trouble."**

"Fat chance," Grover muttered bitterly and Leo wondered what had happened.

"**Boy, was I wrong."**

"That's not new," Thalia muttered and Leo shot her a surprised look. She generally left the scoffing remarks to him, he'd never seen her insult another person like that. She noticed him looking and rolled her eyes as if Leo should have known the characteristics of a boy he'd never met before.

"Percy's not exactly the smartest person in the world, obviously," Leo considered relaying the fact of never having met Percy, then decided he liked being whole and unelectrocuted.

"**See, bad things happen to me on field trips. Like at my fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn't aiming for the school bus, but of course I got expelled anyway."**

Leo and most of the other campers roared with laughter and even Thalia had an half amused – half disbelieving face. Only Annabeth seemed to be un-amused. She sat there, chewing on her lip slightly which Leo figured wasn't real good for her, as Apollo continued.

"**And before that, at my fourth-grade school, when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim. "**

"I bet Percy was the only happy one," Grover smiled fondly, "You know, being able to stay dry and all, and not having to worry about the sharks nibbling on you." Annabeth rolled her eyes.

"Yeah, but he didn't exactly know that the sharks wouldn't eat him, did he?" Leo backtracked on the conversion, a dawning expression on his face as he realized something he'd missed.

"Wait… Percy can stay dry in the water?" Annabeth nodded and Leo pouted. "Dude, that's awesome! That's so not fair! I want to be able to stay dry in the water." Piper looked at him oddly.

"Leo," she started slowly as if trying to explain to a stubborn two-year old that B did, in fact, come after A and before C, "you are a fire-born child of Hephaestus, you could and have, you know, just kind of 'steam dry?" she tilted her head to the side slightly and Leo embarrassedly ran his hand through his thick curls.

"I – I forgot about that," he grinned sheepishly and Piper just rolled her eyes.

"Idiot," Jason told him fondly, grinning at his friend. Leo reached up and tried to smack him but Jason dodged.

"Shut up, you," he grumbled as the others around him laughed.

"**And the time before that... Well, you get the idea."**

"Jeez, how many things did Percy _do_?" Leo asked. Each one of those things obviously warranted an immediate expulsion and that was at least two schools.

"A lot," Annabeth answered, "Percy was expelled from eight schools." Leo whistled appreciatedly. Sure, demigods were trouble and a lot of them got expelled from a couple of schools over the years, him including, but from every single school from first to eighth grade? He'd acknowledge that.

"It's the sea you know?" Annabeth smiled fondly, "That's what his mother used to say whenever she started talking, 'The Sea doesn't like to be tamed. It doesn't like to bow down to anyone and raises its crest high in pride.' It's always been hard for Percy to accept authority and at school, when he didn't realize who he was or why everything was so difficult to him, he tended to lash out a bit."

Grover muttered something to the effect of 'a bit' was a little too small. Or quite a bit small, but Leo couldn't tell beyond the nervous chewing of a brand new coke can. Annabeth smiled amusedly, "A bit is a little small but Percy did calm down a bit. He's been going to the same school for the past two years now," Thalia muttered how he was cheating because his stepfather drew ties there but Annabeth continued on,

"This would – _will_" her eyes momentarily flashed with that fierce determination that Leo had grown accustomed to over their shared time, "be his third year." Silence followed her statement before Apollo began to read again.

"**This trip, I was determined to be good."**

Grover snorted.

"**All the way into the city, I put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly, redheaded kleptomaniac girl, hitting my best friend Grover** **in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich."**

Leo wrinkled his nose in disgust. He'd eaten his fair share of vile things, running away so many times and living out in the streets did that to a person, but he'd never stooped so low as to eat peanut butter-and-ketchup together, let alone on a sandwich. Judging from the equally disgusted faces around him and the camp's fair share of 'EWW's and 'Gross's, he wasn't alone.

"**Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny."**

"Really Percy, I wasn't _that _small," Leo heard Grover groan over the snickers of the description. Annabeth shot him an amused look.

"I don't know, you did seem smaller than all the other satyrs your age," Grover glared at her, telepathically telling her she wasn't helping.

"Yeah but I was bigger than Percy. If I was scrawny, he was a runt." There was a rumble of laughter around the camp that seemed to prove Grover's statement true.

**He cried when he got frustrated. **

Leo would have winced in sympathy for Grover, it mustn't have been easy hearing your best friend's less than flattering description of you, but he was too busy laughing along with all the other boys. Some of the girls had joined in with the laughter, including Thalia whom Leo decided had the most beautiful laugh when it wasn't directed at his expense, but most were glaring at the laughing people, going on about how 'sensitive' Grover was and how no one should judge him over it.

"Thanks a lot Percy," Leo heard Grover huff and it was hard to tide in his laughter.

"**He must've been held back several grades, because he was the only sixth grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all that, he was crippled."**

"Way to put it to someone gently," Jason said, blinking his eyes in slight surprise. It would have never gone well in the Roman legions to talk to a partner in such a way. Leo just smirked at him.

"Gotta love honesty though," he stated happily, completely dismissing the half-hearted glare sent from Grover who had heard the entire conversion with what Leo assumed was super goat hearing.

"**He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like every step hurt him, but don't let that fool you. You should've seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria."**

"Because that's not suspicious at all," the rude girl from the Ares cabin spoke up again and she looked at Grover with evident disgust, "If even Prissy noticed, it must have been bad. You need to work on your stealth goat boy." Grover harrumphed at that but otherwise said nothing. Leo took that as a sign of agreement to the statement and chuckled softly.

"**Anyway, Nancy Bobofit was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in his curly brown hair, and she knew I couldn't do anything back to her because I was already on probation."**

"Why is that not surprising?" Annabeth sighed loudly as if Percy's past misdoings were causing her great sorrows now. Leo was quite the opposite; with any new hint to the trouble maker that was Percy, Leo was respecting him more and more.

"**The headmaster had threatened me with death by in-school suspension-" **

"Oh the horror," Thalia bemoaned sarcastically, "having to stay inside an office for a few hours instead of in a classroom," Leo looked scandalized at his love.

"You are wrong! In-school suspension is horrible! It's the worst thing in the world!" Leo shuddered to add to his point but Thalia just rolled her eyes in response.

"**-if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip."**

"What if it wasn't his fault?" Piper asked, picking up on the apparent injustice of the statement. Grover just shook his head.

"Even if Percy didn't do it, it would probably be blamed on him. Everyone in our class knew that he was always on thin ice. All they had to do was point a finger and Percy would be serving detention for a month, no matter what." Leo grimaced at that. He could sympathize with that, there was a lot of things that went missing in the cities and everyone was prone to throw their aspersions at the thin, battered Latin boy living on the streets.

"That's not fair," Piper stated and Grover shrugged, sending the proverbial message of 'life isn't fair' in response. Piper huffed but Leo understood. Life was a cruel mistress with a sick sense of humor and if the gods could send her to an eternal slumber (a better one then the one they put Gaea into hopefully) he would be quite thankful.

**"I'm going to kill her," I mumbled.** **Grover tried to calm me down."**

"Like that would work. Very few things calm Percy down," Thalia stated, earning a few nods from the older campers that had known Percy.

**"It's okay. I like peanut butter."**

"And that's not one of them," Thalia shook her head amusedly, eyeing Grover. "Really? Was that seriously the best you could do? How long had you known Percy, a year? And you honestly thought that would work?" Grover did not deem her question worthy of a response but from the seemingly pink tinge on his cheeks, Leo knew he was embarrassed at the truth.

"**He dodged another piece of Nancy's lunch."**

"Just let him hit her," the girl from Ares begged. Several of her siblings nodded their heads in agreement but from Grover's sheepish grin, Leo figured their wish wouldn't be granted.

**"That's it." I started to get up, but Grover pulled me back to my seat."**

"Eurgh, why did you stop him?" The same girl spoke, glaring at Grover. Leo silently agreed. He didn't believe in beating up on girls when they'd done nothing wrong but even he would have hit the girl to get some manners into her. Other people around the pavilion looked like they agreed.

**"You're already on probation," he reminded me. "You know who'll get blamed if anything happens."**

"Yeah," Piper fumed slightly, obviously not quite over the whole 'blame Percy for everything' thing, "the same kid that always did apparently," Leo slid a bit further from the muttering Piper and made a note about not pissing off Piper too much. All the heated sexual tension between her and Jason must have been addling her brains and setting her short fused anger burning bright.

"**Looking back on it, I wish I'd decked Nancy Bobofit right then and there. In-school suspension would've been nothing compared to the mess I was about to get myself into."**

"Oh great, that sounds really reassuring," Thalia scoffed. Apollo smiled at his little sister and made to read again but an odd look crossed his face. After a few moments of looking like he really needed to find a toilet or at least an non itchy shrub (in Leo's opinion) he stood up and closed the book, handing it back to Chiron safe-keeping.

"I apologize, dear campers, but my father Zeus requires my presence. I will come back tomorrow to continue our tale," he winked and was about to whisk himself off to where ever when Leo interrupted.

"Wait! Why can't we just continue while you are gone?" Leo was just starting to get his answers, he didn't want to be left hanging so soon. They had barely even begun and they were already stopping!

Apollo smiled amusedly at the boy. "Because I said I would read the first chapter and I will! Besides," he began as an obvious afterthought, "the book is hot off the muses, so to speak, and only a god can read it without getting heavy and crippling burns that would most likely be fatal to mortals such as yourself!" he smiled cheerfully but Leo had no doubt that he knew very well that he'd just ensured not a single camper would touch the books anytime soon.

With a heavy sigh he watched the poetic god of archery vanish of and resigned himself to another day of speculating the life of the lost hero. Maybe Annabeth would be in a better mood and let some information slip past her radar.

Sorry that it's not the complete first chapter but I'd taken a lot of time on this and I wanted to get something posted up soon. Hopefully next chapter will be the rest of the first chapter. Would also like to add the disclaimer of any foreign language phrases comes from Google Translate, so if it's horribly wrong, blame it, not me. I hope you enjoyed this and I will try to update as soon as possible.


	3. I Vaporize My PreAlgebra Teacher' II

** Author's Note: There was some confusion about Leo or Piper being able to understand Latin. I didn't mean it as that they was Roman or anything, just that he had been around enough with Jason to pick up a few phrases. Since Leo always struck as a pranking/getting in trouble kind of guy I put him as the one to understand the whole trouble maker line. Sorry for the unclarity. **

* * *

><p>Piper wasn't going to lie, she was just as curious about the misplaced demigod as Leo was, but she knew better than to bother Annabeth about it. Anyone knew better than to bother Annabeth about it besides Leo but Piper figured her sporadic friend was a category all of himself. Still, she had been just as disappointed as Leo was when Apollo stopped and, as they were gathered in to read the next part of the chapter, she was just as excited as him.<p>

"Excited much?" Jason whispered in her ear, sending shivers down her back that she hoped to the gods no one had noticed. She nodded.

"That obvious?" she whispered back as they sat down and watched, with mid interest, Thalia thwack Leo across the head with her bow. He smiled, either at her or at Leo and Thalia, she hoped for the latter.

"Not as much as Leo," They paused, both simultaneously rolling their eyes as Leo jumped back up and practically skipped (he'd never admit it but he _so _did) over to them. He took one look at the two, close but definitely not over-friendly close, and turned around, yelling for the entire camp to hear.

"Can't sit over here! Pipes and Jas are having a_ moment!" _The way he said 'moment' had Piper blushing slightly and several campers snickering, her siblings giving her knowing looks. She grabbed Leo by his tool belt, yanking him down between her and Jason roughly.

"Shut _up! _Me and Jason are friends! Nothing more!" She didn't add the fact that, with how Jason had distanced himself, just slightly, since he got the majority of his memories back, had her thinking he had a girlfriend back home. That was for her to deal with and Leo didn't need to know about it.

"Sure you are princess," Leo rolled his eyes and flipped from between her and Jason, landing on his feet (surprisingly) and instead sitting to the right of Jason, far enough that Piper couldn't hit him without causing a scene. She settled for glaring at him and went about thinking of how many people she would need to convince to keep Leo from hearing the story. Probably just Chiron which would take a little bit more time than a camper, but definitely less than the effort for a god.

"Don't do it," Jason told her, giving her that look that he generally reserved for Leo. The one that said he knew exactly what they were planning and not to do it. Piper played innocent.

"Do what?" She traced her voice with just enough charm to confuse him, maybe doubt his self-assuredness. Jason blinked for a second, before glaring half-heartedly at Piper who merely smiled innocently.

"Nice try Pipes. Don't do whatever revenge on Leo you are planning in that pretty head of yours," Piper did the mature thing. That is, if she was Leo, and stuck her tongue out at the blond boy, before turning to the pavilion where Chiron and Apollo now stood.

Apollo grinned at them all, "Welcome back, we shall now continue on with the first Percy Jackson story," All the campers grinned expectantly, "I hope you all enjoy it." He smiled brightly again and Piper realized with a flush that he was quite attractive. She snuck a glance towards Jason and noticed they had the same golden hair. She was broken from her trance by Apollo flicking open the book and reading again.

"**Mr. Brunner led the museum tour."**

"Of course he did, wasn't it for the Latin class?" Leo looked confused and Piper rolled her eyes.

"Shut up, thinking's not your strong suit." Thalia advised him and Leo blushed slightly. Piper was torn between amusement at her friend and embarrassment. She would need to talk to her mother about not making Leo fall for the girls he couldn't get. It was getting sad.

"**He rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange pottery.** **It blew my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years."**

"Longer than that," Annabeth smiled sadly, knowing that she was speaking to someone that simply wasn't there. Piper felt sorry for her girl, losing someone she loved without any warning and not even knowing what's happened to him must have been terrible. Then, she mentally slapped herself and cursed her mother and siblings for making her so in-tuned to everyone's love life.

She could stand not noticing all the gooey sappy things at camp like the fact that right at this moment, the scary counselor of Ares, Clarisse, was holding hands with Hermes's Chris under their table or that Katie Gardener was blushing profusely at something one of the Stoll brothers said, Travis or Connor she couldn't tell. Or that her sister was staring at Leo – damn it! Stupid mother, stupid sisters!

"You okay?" Leo asked, concern flashing through his hazel eyes, "You've been looking weird since Owl-Face over there –"he cocked a finger towards Annabeth and Piper momentarily thanked the gods she hadn't heard. She blushed at the fact that she was losing concentration over such trivial things, and told Leo she was fine. He shot her a weird look but returned to Apollo.

**He gathered us around a thirteen-foot-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, a **_**stele, **_**for a girl about our age.**

"Because that's what everyone wants to go to a field trip for," Thalia rolled her eyes, "here's a wonderful example of Ancient Grecian architecture and – oh! – look at that, it's for a girl about your age! How completely coincidental!" Laughter followed her words and Apollo himself shot her an amused look.

"Well, Chiron does have his ways of keeping even the mortals under control," Apollo winked and Piper looked at Chiron, shocked. He wouldn't have really brought them to a stele as an indirect threat, would he? Chiron, having caught her and a few other campers staring at him in the same shocked, slightly scared way, and tried to ease their worries.

"Of course I didn't do it that way, none of those students would have gotten the subtle art of indirect threats," He smiled serenely and Piper noticed for the first time that Chiron was really, really bad at reassuring people, despite being a teacher for over three thousand years.

"**He told us about the carvings on the sides. I was trying to listen to what he had to say, because it was kind of interesting,"**

"Wait, Percy found something informative _interesting?" _Annabeth shot the Stoll brother, Piper would have to ask Leo to see if he could tell them apart, they spent so much time together, and he had to know which was which, a dark glare.

"Percy actually isn't that bad, we talk about architecture and stuff a lot and he's always seemed interested in it." She glared at the campers at large as if daring anyone of them to contradict her. Piper watched as the Stoll brothers invariably sealed their fate.

"Yeah," one of them stage-whispered to the other, smirking in the direction of Annabeth who was watching them through eagle-sharp eyesight, "but isn't that so he can get some action with her?" Piper's eyes widened and even Leo muttered a quiet 'idiot' under his breath. Annabeth, however, merely smiled sweetly at the brothers.

"Whatever Percy's intention is, it still stands to fact that he's gotten more 'action' then you two will probably ever get," sniggers followed that and the Stolls took their turn looking outraged.

"Ah but Annabeth, we have great game. We could get any of these lovely ladies," some of the girls, Piper included, snorted at that one. None of the girls sans Katie, who was still blushing (dammit mother!) would touch the brothers with a ten foot pole, unless it had a spearhead at the end.

Annabeth smiled again, taking her dagger casually out of her hidden sheath. "Not if certain parts are missing," she told them sweetly, tossing the dagger loftily from one hand to the other. Both boys paled and immediately turned their attention back to Apollo. Piper would have to learn her methods.

"**-but everybody around me was talking, and every time I told them to shut up, the other teacher chaperone, Mrs. Dodds, would give me the evil eye."**

"Mrs. Dodds?" Nico, who had appeared sleeping or at least not paying attention, immediately straightened up, shooting a look to Grover. "Does he mean -?" Grover nodded before Nico could finish the sentence and Nico smiled expectantly. "Wonderful, action." He clapped his hands together and turned his attention back to Apollo, leaving everyone else at camp, Piper included, extremely confused.

"**Mrs. Dodds was this little math teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean enough to ride a Harley right into your locker."**

"She's a monster isn't she?" Katie spoke up for the first time, and Piper chanced a glance at her, happy to see that she was no longer physically vocalizing her attractions. Grover nodded and several of the people started muttering confusedly. If this book started out with a major monster attack, like it was shaping to be, shouldn't it be the Minotaur like everyone always talked about Percy defeating? Annabeth, seeing their looks, took pity and explained, somewhat.

"Percy was attacked beforehand, but Chiron decided to keep in the dark a little longer, try to keep him from the danger and more importantly, out of everyone's hair," a few people chuckled appreciatedly at that but Piper looked confused.

"But you guys …. like him?" she phrased it as a question and several of the campers nodded, "then why would he not being here be 'keeping him out of your hair'?" Several of the campers laughed at her. Piper knew the laugh well, the kind that was given to new people when they should know something and didn't. It wasn't particularly pleasant even if it were the campers.

"Sure we like him, doesn't stop him from being an idiot does it?" Nico told her, flicking his hair from his eyes. "Or from attracting a thousand monsters to the camp every year," Leo paled at that and Piper voiced the question they both were thinking.

"That bad?" Her tone made it rather obvious that she was hesitant to want him back, if he was going to endanger the camp again. She really just wanted a break from something wanting to kill, torture, and eat or all three of those together. Nico shot her an amused, pitying look.

"Yeah, he's attracted hellhounds, fire-breathing bull automatons – you can blame your father for those," he added as an afterthought, making Leo blush as if he were the one that had caused giant metal bulls to rampage through the camp, "Murder happy skeletons once, we had a whole battle here right after he got back from the labyrinth, and of course Battle of Olympus but we don't really count that because we brought the fight to the enemy that time, am I missing anything?" He addressed the rest of the camp at large.

"The Stymphalian birds!" One of them cried out, followed closely by the others.

"The harpy incident!" One of the Stolls snickered and several of the people joined them. Piper was too afraid to ask about the incident and so Jason did. The Stolls smirked in response. "Oh Percy's a huge procrastinator, especially when it comes to leaving at the end of summer. Last time he waited too long and Mr. D sent the cleaning harpies after him. Chased him all throughout camp, they did." Piper stared at them.

"How is that funny?" she asked in a rather weak voice. They just shrugged and turned back to Apollo.

"**She had come to Yancy halfway through the year, when our last math teacher had a nervous breakdown."**

Nico chuckled darkly. "Sure," Piper wasn't close to him but she still shied away somewhat. The son of Hades was a creepy one indeed.

"**From her first day, Mrs. Dodds loved Nancy Bobofit and figured I was devil spawn."**

"No, she likes the devil's spawn." Thalia pointed towards Nico who glared at her.

"My father is a respectable, powerful god of the dead and of riches, he is not some red-skinned horned demon from the Christian faith, thank you very much!" Several kids laughed at Nico's reaction, Piper included. She was so used to him being the creepy quiet kid, she forgot that he had other emotions as well.

" **She would point her crooked finger at me and say, "Now, honey," real sweet, and I knew I was going to get after-school detention for a month."**

"Isn't that a bit harsh?" Leo asked and Piper rolled her eyes.

"She's a monster Valdez, she's not going to be nice anytime soon."

"I knew that…"

"**One time, after she'd made me erase answers out of old math workbooks until midnight, I told Grover I didn't think Mrs. Dodds was human. He looked at me, real serious, and said, "You're absolutely right."**

Several of the campers laughed as they thought of the loveable satyr. Said satyr blushed furiously at Annabeth's and Thalia's incredulous looks.

"You said that? To _Percy_? Are you insane? No wonder he caught on so fast!" Annabeth ranted and Piper had to admit, she was quite glad that she wasn't the furry goat-boy. The glare from Annabeth alone would have her cowering.

"**Mr. Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art.** **Finally, Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the stele, and I turned around and said, "Will you **_**shut up**_**?"**

"Leave it Percy," Thalia rolled her eyes. "He probably spoke really loud and now someone's going to hear it and he's going to get in trouble. Then he'll get even by somehow dousing that Bobofit girl in water and then he will get discovered by the monster and will have to fight for his life, and such will began the hatred of Percy Jackson by the kindly ones" Piper stared.

"No one's that _un_lucky," she said, and the campers all laughed. "Are they?" she asked in lieu of Jason and Leo's own questions. Annabeth smiled sadly.

"Percy is. He probably would have his picture besides the word if the mortals had any idea. He puts black cats to shame. He's simply the most unluckiest person in the history of the world. Add that to the mix of recklessness and out right stubbornness, we are lucky he's still alive," her eyes held a certain fondness that Piper saw in few people around the camp.

"**It came out louder than I meant it to."**

"And here it goes," Nico stated, half amused, half exasperated. Leo opened his mouth to say something but Piper glared at him, and he got the message. She wanted to hear the damn story and if he interrupted for something stupid she would charm-speak him into doing something either horribly painful or excruciatingly painful, maybe both.

"**The whole group laughed. Mr. Brunner stopped his story."**

"At least it was Chiron," Thalia tried to comfort the suddenly tense Annabeth. From Annabeth's glare at anyone who dared laugh at Percy's slip-up, including a now gulping Leo beside her, Piper doubted its success.

**"Mr. Jackson," he said, "did you have a comment?"**

**My face was totally red. I said, "No, sir."**

**Mr. Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele. "Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?"**

"He's really expecting Percy to know the answer," Clarisse scoffed, rolling her ideas as if the very thought of Percy knowing anything was preposterous. Piper couldn't help herself.

"Could you be nice for like, five minutes?" She shot over to the Ares girl, gulping inwardly at the angry glare the girl sent her.

"Excuse me?" Clarisse thundered at her, brown eyes flashing dangerously as she stood up. Without even thinking about it Piper mirrored the movement. She didn't know what had come over her, but she felt like she needed to defend Percy Jackson, even against someone who could easily beat her into the ground. The girl stepped up to her and a fight might have actually escalated had Jason not intervened.

"Hey now, it's alright. Just go sit back down Clarisse," he smiled amicably and his blue eyes were warm but both Piper and Clarisse got the threat. If Clarisse touched Piper, she would have to deal with her sudden protector. It annoyed Piper that she apparently couldn't solve her own arguments and so when Clarisse sat back down with but a backwards glare thrown for their benefit, Piper sat back down without a glance at Jason, arms folded over her chest as she stared resolutely at Apollo.

She ignored Leo's low whistle and pseudo-whispered sing-song comment of 'You're in trouble…' aimed at Jason. She bit back a smile when she heard Leo's quiet yelp of pain when Jason promptly thumped him on the back of the head.

"**I looked at the carving, and felt a flush of relief, because I actually recognized it. "That's Kronos eating his kids, right?""**

"Trust Percy to remember that one," one of the campers grumbled, a little green at the thought of their parents getting eaten, whilst another asked why Chiron had to mention that one. Piper didn't know it was possible for a centaur to blush but Chiron turned a magnificent shade of spruce and refused to answer.

**"Yes," Mr. Brunner said, obviously not satisfied.** **"And he **_**did **_**this because ..."**

**"Well..." I racked my brain to remember. "Kronos was the king god, and—"**

"He's finally done it," Thalia whistled lowly, eyes fixated on her godly older brother.

"Done what?" Leo asked, apparently over being hit by Jason. Piper was curious as well but her current irritation at Jason prevented her from turning towards Thalia to hear the answer.

"Pissed off Apollo, we thought it was impossible to do it, but Percy's done it. I don't know to be proud or irritated," Thalia gestured towards Apollo who looked quite offended at being compared to the evil-titan overlord that was in all accounts his grandfather. Irritation colored his reading and his eyes were narrowed as if he were imagining skewering Percy for even thinking such a thing. Piper praised the gods that she was not Percy.

She liked being a completely untransformed human as well as having all of her limbs fully intact.

**"God?" Mr. Brunner asked.**

**"Titan," I corrected myself. "And ... he didn't trust his kids, who were the gods. So, um, Kronos ate them, right? But his wife hid baby Zeus, and gave Kronos a rock to eat instead.** **And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronos, into barfing up his brothers and sisters—"**

**"Eeew!" said one of the girls behind me."**

"Oh grow up," Piper muttered with a roll of her eyes and Jason laughed lightly. Piper glanced up at him and he smiled warmly, blue eyes asking for forgiveness for whatever he'd done wrong. Piper huffed and looked away. She was being immature, but she was also sick of Jason (or Leo on occasion) settling her fights for her. Since they had come back, he'd been treating her fragile and the only fight she'd solved herself was with Drew and even that was because he hadn't known about it.

That's why she was irritated at him and also why she wasn't looking at him now. Stupid bright blue eyes would get her to forgive him like that, and she just didn't want to. That and she'd blush like a catholic school girl on her first date and Leo would never let her off it when he saw.

**"—and so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans," I continued, "and the gods won."** **Some snickers from the group."**

"Leave it to Percy," Grover started, amazement in his eyes, "to summarize years and years of ruthless fighting into a simple paragraph," several of the campers nodded and everyone laughed at it. Very Percy Jackson indeed.

"**Behind me, Nancy Bobofit mumbled to a friend, "Like we're going to use this in real life. Like it's going to say on our job applications, 'Please explain why Kronos ate his kids.'"**

"It would be an awesome job if it did," One of the Stolls said, grinning at each other in the way that had Piper gulping and checking her pockets one more than one occasion. She made a mental note to never, ever, accept a job offer from the brothers. She didn't even want to think about what kind of job they could come up with that had that as a central question.

**"And why, Mr. Jackson," Brunner said, "to paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?"**

"Busted," Leo snorted, "Chiron's got magic horse hearing," Piper stared incredulously at her friend. Magic horse hearing? Had her friend finally gone off the deep end? Had he eaten something odd from one of the Hermes children? Either way she feared for his sanity. Or what was left of it anyway.

**"Busted," Grover muttered.**

**"Shut up," Nancy hissed, her face even brighter red than her hair."**

"She gives a bad name to gingers everywhere," Rachel Elizabeth Dare, the camp's oracle, stated, tugging at one of her own bright locks. The other two red-heads at camp, Piper's twin sisters, nodded in agreement.

"**At least Nancy got packed, too. Mr. Brunner was the only one who ever caught her saying anything wrong. He had radar ears."**

"Percy agrees with me!" Piper stared at Leo and shook her head. Sometimes she worried.

"**I thought about his question, and shrugged. "I don't know, sir."**

**"I see." Mr. Brunner looked disappointed. "Well, half credit, Mr. Jackson. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's stomach. "**

"Disgorged is just a nice way to say he puked them up right?" Travis asked, smirking in Apollo's direction. Piper noticed that although Apollo had ignored this and promptly read on, his cheeks were stained pink. Piper felt a little sick at the thought, and so listened intently to Apollo to drown out the thoughts.

"**The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs. Dodds, would you lead us back outside?"**

"Wow, Chiron, wow. Great subject change," the campers snickered at the once again blushing centaur before turning back towards Apollo to continue the story. However, said god was currently placing the book back into the box. "What are you doing?" the same camper who had made the comment about Chiron asked. Apollo smiled brightly at him and Piper got the feeling that he was getting his revenge on Travis.

"Well, past Chiron was quite correct, now is the perfect time for lunch, so we shall patiently wait for the harpies to have finished cooking it, come back into the pavilion and partake in the undoubtedly wonderful meal, and then continue on with the story, okay?" Judging from the amount of complaining he got for stopping the story (Again) in the middle of the first chapter, no one was okay with it, but Apollo simply ushered them all out to 'go practice being heros for a bit' and left them no choice but to go.

Piper was already half-way across the courtyard when Jason finally caught up with her. She was still irritated with him, and maybe, just maybe it had a little bit more with Jason's gradual withdrawal from her than it did his grating habit of protecting her, but it didn't matter. Either way, she didn't want to have this conversation now, because she knew that if she talked to Jason now, he would find some way to comfort her as he always did and her anger would dissipate.

She knew it was immature but she wanted to stay angry at the blond boy a little bit longer and so she glared at him before turning again to walk away. She was maybe two strides away before she felt his gentle but firm hand placed on her shoulder. She counted to three before slowly facing him, kaleidoscope eyes meeting electric blue. He wasn't smiling his crooked apologetic smile now, but staring intently, as if he had tried to find out what he'd done and was now irritated because he didn't find anything. That was probably an accurate assessment, considering the circumstance.

"Can we at least _talk_?" He was irritated, that was obvious in his question and Piper felt her own rarely used anger spike up.

"What do you want to know?" she demanded, stepping just out of Jason's reach and folding her arms over her chest. She had never fought with Jason before and it was odd, the feeling of crushing fear that it could ruin their friendship that surrounded her. She was rather known for admitting things during her anger, and she had quite a lot of bottled feelings between her and Jason.

"Why you are mad at me! All I did was step in between you and Clarisse so you two didn't get into it and suddenly I'm getting the cold shoulder!" Piper could admit, from Jason's point of view the whole thing did seem quite ludicrous, but she was irritated with her whole situation with Jason and she wasn't about to back down now just for it to blow up later, in a possibly more public place.

"I'm sick of you acting like I can't defend myself!" she shot back, "Ever since we got back from our quest, you've been acting like I'm made of glass or something! You always step in when I'm arguing with someone and it's annoying!" Jason was silent for a moment and Piper caught her breath at her little outburst. Jason's face was rather stoic but she swore she could see a flash of hurt go through them. Most of her anger had disappeared and she was about to apologize when Jason spoke again.

"I only do it because I care and I don't want to see you hurt," he told her quietly and Piper suddenly felt a mixture of anger and guilt. She was horrified to feel the tears begin to fall but she pulled further away from Jason before letting her irritation flow and shooting back another retort, all thoughts of apologizing flying out the window.

"If you cared you wouldn't be pulling away." Her words were quiet, not very angry, but she could see the impact they had on Jason. He was shocked for a moment, as if he truly thought the fight was simply about jumping in when he shouldn't have, and by the time he went to speak, to deny the action, Piper was already ahead.

"Don't say you don't know what I'm talking about. We both know good and well that as soon as your memories started coming back, you began to distance yourself from me. If you have a girlfriend back home, I understand." Her voice was slightly shaky at the end and the tears were actually falling now. She could tell from the slightly guilty look on Jason's face, that she had hit a ringer.

"Piper…." Jason spoke softly, eyes pleading for to let him explain. Piper knew that Jason shouldn't feel guilty and knew that deep down she wasn't angry at Jason for the whole situation, but Hera for taking Jason's memories and then making her fall in love with a boy she didn't actually know, but she still turned away from him in that moment, tears drying as she went to her sisters and brothers and away from her friend.

They could talk later, but for now she would eat, and then listen to the rest of the chapter. She refused to dwell on the whole incident, and maybe Jason would agree to letting the whole thing just bury beneath the two. She tried to make it seem like that's what she wanted as she smiled brightly against her siblings' questioning concern. She would deal with it all later.

* * *

><p><strong>Kind of an odd end considering this is just a 'so and so reads such and such' but I wanted my story to have a bit more of an underlying plot to it and when I sat down and (finally) got this down, that's what came out. Also, I apologize for the blatant tardiness for the chapter and for the fact that it's still going to be on chapter one but on the slight upside: this chapter is longer than the last! (although not by much) I hoped you enjoyed it and if you don't like the idea of the underlying plot thingy just tell me and I'll revise my future plans. Until Next Time!<br>**


	4. I Vaporize My PreAlgebra Teacher III

Jason was confused. He didn't understand half of what just happened with Piper. All he knew was that she was angry at him for something he had no control over. It wasn't his fault that the crazy Queen Goddess had robbed him of his memories and shoved him onto a bus with two people she forged memories of him for. He wasn't the one that strung Piper on, and it wasn't his fault that he was slowly remembering Reyna and what they might have been. It wasn't his fault that he was torn between the what could have been of his past and the what can be in the present. The more he sat at the Zeus table alone, picking disinterestedly at his food, the angrier he got over the situation. He watched Piper smile and joke around, getting petty pleasure over the half-hearted laughs and smiles.

Lunch passed quickly, the cleaning harpies trilling angrily at him for wasting his food and Leo slipped beside him, hands rapidly twisting tidbits onto a new mechanical toy of unknown use. After a few seconds he put it down and it ran around, zapping pieces of dirt and crumbs left by the cleaning harpies. He smiled ruefully at the gadget before turning towards Jason.

"Thalia's with Annabeth and their friends," Jason told him tonelessly, raising a pale finger to point towards the Hades table where Thalia sat surrounded by Annabeth, Nico, and Grover.

"Good to know, but that's not what I was gonna ask," Leo gently pushed his little maid away from the edge of the table, "What's going on with you and princess?" Jason was astounded; both on the fact that he was so obvious that even his less than observant friend Leo had noticed and that aforementioned friend had managed to speak so loudly that half of the camp turned towards them curiously, Aphrodite table included. He looked away from them after catching eye with Piper who merely lifted an unintentionally perfect eyebrow before turning pointedly away from him as well.

"Could you talk any louder Leo?" He hissed, a bit of a flush tainting his skin as his back prickled from all the stares of impatient campers wanting their fix of entertainment. Leo merely smiled at him cheekily, and waved towards a couple girls sitting next to Piper. Jason stared at Piper but she was now purposely staring up at the Head table, awaiting Apollo's return from wherever. "I don't know what's going on. It's confusing." Jason admitted. Leo smiled sympathetically and was about to speak but was interrupted by a brilliant flash from the Head table. Wincing slightly, he turned towards the now fading light where Apollo stood, grinning with the book tightly clasped in his hands.

"Hello demigods, Chiron," he bowed his head down slightly in greeting towards the centaur before sitting back down. "We shall now commence the reading of Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief!" Jason dimly noticed that Apollo's bright smile was very nearly blinding and wished he would close his mouth. Leo murmured some explicit words in Spanish Jason doubted his mother had taught him and looked at the table.

"Are we actually going to get anywhere in the book this time?" One of the Ares cabin members spoke up, his bulky frame tensing as soon as he spoke. Dimmed memories appeared to Jason as he recalled the punishments directed by the praetors at the Roman camp. He prayed that the Greek god didn't carry a sack full of badgers for insubordinate nephews.

"Maybe if you stopped talking, we could." Apollo shot back, still smiling brightly as he cracked open the book.

"**The class drifted off, the girls holding their stomachs, the guys pushing each other around and acting like doofuses. Grover and I were about to follow when Mr. Brunner said, "Mr. Jackson." I knew that was coming."**

"Oh I hate that moment," Leo groaned, grabbing some new bolts and things from his tool belt. Jason looked at him, confused.

"What moment?" Leo looked at him as if he were crazy as did some of the other demigods that had heard him. "What moment?" he repeated. "I never went to school remember?" He prodded. Leo's eyes slowly went back to their normal size and he sighed, shaking his head as if disappointed.

"I forget sometimes," His hands were quite a distraction and Jason found himself what kind of mechanical device needed a mini pink boa. "Yo, Jason! My eyes are up here!" Leo snapped his fingers and Jason looked up, flushing slightly from Leo's words that had quite a few people looking at them now. Leo grinned and Jason shot him a glare that clearly stated 'you do it and I'll electrocute you'. Leo heeded the moment and continued, "The moment is this look or way of speech, like calling your name back, that means you are about to be in trouble. I hate that moment." Several other demigods were nodding in agreement. Jason just shrugged, maybe it was a school thing.

"**I told Grover to keep going. Then I turned toward Mr. Brunner. "Sir?" Mr. Brunner had this look that wouldn't let you go— intense brown eyes that could've been a thousand years old and had seen everything."**

"You know," a girl from the Hermes cabin whose name was either Natalie or Maddie, spoke, "You don't always realize because he's always doing stupid or reckless things, but Percy's actually quite observant." Several other campers nodded thoughtfully and Grover responded.

"Yeah, that was one of the problems with keeping him safe when he didn't know about himself yet, he just saw things. Like if I'd lied to him, he just _knew." _He shook his head, horns swaying back and force with the action. Both the Stoll brothers snorted at that.

"Well, that might simply be because you are a terrible liar," either Travis or Connor retorted. Several of the campers laughed at that, sharing times when Grover was apparently in charge of secrets and blurted them out or they were caught because they knew he was lying. Grover flushed red and bowed his head.

"Grover is right, as is Natalie," Chiron stated calmly, "Percy's observance skills do not leave much to be desired, and with his curiosity, it has gotten him in quite a lot of trouble through the years." Grover smiled brightly once Chiron came to his rescue and even Jason laughed when he promptly stuck his tongue out at the Stolls.

**"You must learn the answer to my question," Mr. Brunner told me.**

**"About the Titans?"**

**"About real life. And how your studies apply to it."**

**"Oh."**

**"What you learn from me," he said, "is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson."**

"Percy's not going to like that," Annabeth stated with a sad, small smile. Jason contemplated briefly, accede to his curiosity and ask her what she meant and brave her anger or let it be and eradicate all possibilities that she would stab him. Before he could make his decision, however, Leo took it from him and asked her instead. Annabeth looked at the two for a moment and Jason honestly thought she was going to take out her dagger and make Leo a shish-kabob when she sighed and answered them.

"I forget that you guys didn't know him, anyone else here wouldn't have asked that," and there she went again, the daughter of Minerva/Athena making him feel as if he didn't know anything. He brushed his irritation aside and listened as she explained. "Percy is the son of the sea god, and the sea's never liked being tamed. Percy hates when anyone tells him what to do, or more specifically for this moment, what they will or will not accept from him. He's impertinent like that." Thalia, Grover, and Nico all nodded in agreement, having been on tasks with him before. Even Chiron smiled ruefully in remembrance. Jason nodded. It made sense in a way, the mysteries and temper of the sea was why the Romans always feared it, it was too unpredictable.

"**I wanted to get angry, this guy pushed me so hard."**

"See?" Annabeth smiled victoriously as if she was proving to a medieval architect that great stone arched ceilings in a cathedral were possible without caving in. Jason just bit back a roll of his eyes.

"No one disagreed with you, owl-face," Leo told her without looking from his distinctly odd looking machine, first the boa, then the make-up? Jason wondered briefly if his friend was that desperate and vowed to find him a nice girl to date. Not at the moment though, because Annabeth was glaring angrily at them now and he didn't think it would be fair to set a girl up with a man with a death sentence.

"**I mean, sure, it was kind of cool on tournament days, when he dressed up in a suit of Roman armor and shouted: "What ho!'" and challenged us, sword-point against chalk, to run to the board and name every Greek and Roman person who had ever lived, and their mother, and what god they worshipped."**

"That does seem pretty cool," Jason stared long and hard at his friend, shock written on his every feature. The entire camp, he would've noticed had he not been staring, was mirroring his exact actions. Leo didn't seem to notice for a while, murmuring some song in Spanish as he swiftly bolted the arms of his machine into place, until he realized it was quiet. "What?" He asked when he finally looked up to see why the reading stopped. "Do I got something on my face?" His hand went up to feel around his mouth, before taking it back down after not feeling any form of leftover lunch. "What?" he repeated, a flush on his tanned skin as everyone continued looking at him.

"You admitted to liking a class. A class in school." Jason stated slowly, wondering if he should be concerned for his friend. Leo flushed darker and ran a hand through his curly mess of hair.

"Well yeah, it sounded cool. Like it actually wouldn't bore me to tears. It happens sometimes, so?" The last word came out a bit defensive and his hand twitched towards the tool belt around his waist. A few hastily turned around and back towards Apollo who was watching the whole thing with a mixture of amusement and irritation. The people who had turned were the ones unfortunate enough to have met with the now legendary Valdez temper. Leo was calm, a joker and trickster, but his temper was as fiery as his hands when provoked far enough. The Ares cabin had found that out when one of theirs, a burly seventeen-year-old, made a comment about Leo's mother. The end results had been terrifying.

"Let's continue reading," Katie Gardener, one of the few who had witnessed the fallout, stated hastily and the others turned back towards Apollo who resumed reading. Jason peeked again at Leo and watched in slight amusement, slight worry as Leo angrily muttered in a rapid mixture of Spanish and English that only a child who had grown up in a household speaking both can accomplish. His cheeks were still a dark flush and Jason caught a 'never again, stupid school' that had been followed by a string of Spanish profanity and wasn't worried. Leo was more embarrassed than anything.

"**But Mr. Brunner expected me to be as good as everybody else, despite the fact that I have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and I had never made above a C— in my life."**

"It really is hard," Annabeth said, to the agreement of the entire camp, "that's one of the problems me and my stepmother had. She didn't think I actually had all these problems, she just thought I was lazy and didn't like learning." She smiled sadly and many people gave her looks of sympathy and shock. Thalia just patted her back comfortingly.

" **No—he didn't expect me to be as good; he expected me to be better. And I just couldn't learn all those names and facts, much less spell them correctly.I mumbled something about trying harder, while Mr. Brunner took one long sad look at the stele, like he'd been at this girl's funeral. "**

"I had," Chiron confirmed softly, "she was a daughter of Athena right after the problems with Arachne. She was bitten by a poisonous spider and I was unable to save her in time," Jason watched as the entire Athena table and Annabeth shuddered violently at that. He himself felt irritation; a girl had died because her immortal mother had cursed a woman. Stupid gods.

"**He told me to go outside and eat my lunch. The class gathered on the front steps of the museum, where we could watch the foot traffic along Fifth Avenue.**

**Overhead, a huge storm was brewing, with clouds blacker than I'd ever seen over the city. I figured maybe it was global warming or something, because the weather all across New York State had been weird since Christmas."**

"More observations," the same girl, Natalie muttered. "I never noticed anything like that back then, and I was actually at the camp and knew something was off." Many others murmured their assent at that. Even Rachel Elizabeth Dare, the mortal prophetess that generally made Jason uncomfortable was surprised. He could have sworn he heard her mutter 'but he couldn't tell I was human and tried to kill me with his damned sword' but brushed it off as his imagination. That was too odd to explain.

"**We'd had massive snow storms, flooding, wildfires from lightning strikes. I wouldn't have been surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in."**

"Wow," Piper remarked. It had been the first time she had spoken since their fight and Jason wondered if he was imagining the subdued tone or not. His chest felt uncomfortably tight and he couldn't look at her as she spoke. "The gods must have been really angry." Chiron nodded and Jason wondered what could have happened that caused such strife between the gods.

"**Nobody else seemed to notice." **

"That would be the mist," Almost everyone said at the same time. Some sounded irritated or annoyed as if the blindness had greatly hindered themselves while others like Rachel Elizabeth Dare, looked wistful, obviously wishing they themselves could return to blissful unawareness. Jason himself didn't know which side of the fence he stood on, although both Leo and Piper (from a quick glance) looked as if they were both firmly on the wistful side. Even with his memories slowly returning, he couldn't remember a time that he didn't know about monsters and so didn't know what it was like to be an unaware mortal.

"**Some of the guys were pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers. Nancy Bobofit was trying to pickpocket something from a lady's purse, and, of course, Mrs. Dodds wasn't seeing a thing."**

"Of course not," Nico snorted while others looked disgusted or angry at the actions of the students. Some bird lovers, such as Demeter's children who recognized birds as an important part of agriculture for their ability to spread out seeds, were angry at the treatment of the pigeons and looked quite like they wanted to find out who was in Percy's class and pelt them with crackers. Others, like Annabeth, were irritated at Nancy for pickpocketing and even some from the Hermes cabin, like Travis and Connor, looked angry although, Jason reasoned, more likely because of whom it was rather than what they were doing.

"Of course," Natalie from earlier stated sarcastically, irritably brushing a honey blonde/brown curl from her olive skin. Jason noticed that she was pretty in a child of Aphrodite way despite her father, but she was more like Piper in that her short curls were messy and that she wore no makeup, her light dusting of freckles proudly displayed across her upper cheeks and nose as opposed to being hidden shamefully. Her lack of makeup didn't seem to bother Nico who Jason was shocked to see flushed a bit as she spoke. "Why bother noticing a child doing something wrong when you can bug the other kid because he's a demigod? Whole lot is a bunch of smarmy prejudiced jerks."

"Well, although that's true, she's probably not paying attention because she was on a mission, she's only focused on Percy to try to find out if he's a demigod." Nico seemed to have a faint pink color in his normally deathly pale cheeks as he spoke but no one seemed to notice besides Jason. Natalie frowned.

"How do you know she's on a mission?" She prodded and Jason watched Nico's eyes widen minutely as Natalie's strange mix of dark green and brown eyes locked onto him. Jason caught eyes with Piper who had seen the same thing as him and smiled as she pretended to swoon. For a moment, they forgot their anger as they both silently laughed at poor young Nico being subjugated to Natalie's infallibility at getting her answers.

"Let's move on," Nico said turning to Apollo and ignoring Natalie's chagrin induced glare. Jason chuckled when Leo muttered that Grover wasn't the only horrible liar.

"**Grover and I sat on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. We thought that maybe if we did that, everybody wouldn't know we were from that school—the school for loser freaks who couldn't make it elsewhere."**

"Sounds like they'd fit right in," Clarisse snorted along with several of her mean-faced siblings. Jason found out that he was quite angry at Clarisse for starting that stupid fight he and Piper had had and glared angrily at the burly girl. He didn't even realize his temper was going unchecked until Leo was none too gently pulling incessantly at his sleeve.

"What?" He practically growled, turning his glare to his elfish friend. Said friend smiled nervously, hands stilled for once on his half-finished project.

"Well, as much I would totally love to see you send that overgrown muscle-brained girl over there," he cocked a finger towards the Ares table, "You're charged enough to send this whole pavilion to Hades and I got the feeling my grand-uncle or whatever is only willing to see one here and it either of our beautiful selves so can you unplug or something sparky? My eyebrows just grew back from your lovely sister's bolt and I ain't all too willing to sport the look again, ya know?"

Jason realized Leo was rambling and that he only really did that when he was nervous. He looked around to see the campers all looking up at him and then up to see the storm cloud brimming with electricity he had conjured up in his irritation. With a shaking, calming breath he forced the lightning cloud to dissipate before turning towards Clarisse. She stared defiantly calm back at him but with a grim sort of pleasure, Jason could see the slight fear in her dark eyes. "Just stop it with the rude comments, okay? No one wants to hear them and all it is doing is halting the reading. So stop."

With a deceptively calm face, he turned back to Apollo, careful to not look at Piper who was probably angry that he had lost his temper and threatened Clarisse after he berated her for doing it. His brother, conflicting with Chiron's stern, worried gaze, was smiling benevolently at the whole camp and winked at Jason before continuing the reading.

**"Detention?" Grover asked. **

**"Nah," I said. "Not from Brunner. I just wish he'd lay off me sometimes. I mean—I'm not a genius."**

Clarisse looked like she desperately wanted to say something but the sky rumbled its dissent and Jason glared sharply at her so she kept her peace. Beside him, Leo chuckled as did several other campers, including his sister. Not many could get Clarisse to stay silent, especially on one of her favorite subjects such as Percy-bashing.

"**Grover didn't say anything for a while. Then, when I thought he was going to give me some deep philosophical comment to make me feel better, he said, "Can I have your apple?"**

There was quite a bit of laughter at that, even from the satyr in question but most feared Jason's temper and so didn't say anything else.

"**I didn't have much of an appetite, so I let him take it. I watched the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and thought about my mom's apartment, only a little ways uptown from where we sat. I hadn't seen her since Christmas. I wanted so bad to jump in a taxi and head home. She'd hug me and be glad to see me, but she'd be disappointed, too. She'd send me right back to Yancy, remind me that I had to try harder, even if this was my sixth school in six years and I was probably going to be kicked out again. I wouldn't be able to stand that sad look she'd give me."**

"Percy really cares for his mother, doesn't he?" Jason asked, mostly out of curiosity but also partly to show everyone he wasn't going to bite their heads off if they actually spoke. He didn't remember his mother but parts of fuzzy, child memories that were slowly coming back, but even in those it was mostly Thalia than his actual mother.

"Yeah," Annabeth nodded, "especially back then, when she was with her first husband. He was only twelve but Percy was extremely protective of her over him," her face darkened at the thought of whoever was Ms. Jackson's first husband. Judging from the dark faces on both Annabeth and Grover, he decided he didn't want to ask.

"Yeah, Percy's mother is really something incredible." Nico said, a small smile on his lips. He looked completely different, as if he was actually a normal twelve year old boy and not an extremely powerful, possibly deranged son of Hades. "And she makes great blue birthday cake," he added, ignoring the strange looks. Annabeth smiled ruefully.

"The blue will be explained later, I'm sure." She explained, adding that it was something between Percy and his mother before turning back to the reading.

"**Mr. Brunner parked his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. He ate celery while he read a paperback novel. A red umbrella stuck up from the back of his chair, making it look like a motorized café table."**

The Stolls mischievous hazel eyes lit up as they silently formed an idea. Jason made a mental note to watch out for any random wheelchairs or café tables; he really didn't want to get involved in one of the brothers' pranks. He wondered how long it would to take for the Hermes children to manage to steal the old centaur's wheelchair and if the whole cabin would help on such a big thievery scheme. Probably.

"**I was about to unwrap my sandwich when Nancy Bobofit appeared in front of me with her ugly friends"**

"That's one thing I love about Percy," Thalia said with an amused smile, "If he doesn't like the main person, all of their friends are ugly by default." Jason laughed at that.

"Aren't you the same?" He called over, the smile not falling even as Piper turned to look at him. He could deal with that later, right now all he wanted to do was push it aside like Leo did and joke around. Thalia smirked at his words.

"Not always, I don't like fire boy, but I still think you are my adorable little brother," she smiled as he blushed and Leo sputtered indignantly.

"Don't call me fire boy!" He practically snarled, all joking manner gone as he glared at Thalia angrily. Thalia raised a dark eyebrow in response, arms folded as she stared down Leo. Normally Leo would have cracked a joke or even just looked down to escape Thalia's gaze but now he held his ground glaring right back at her. Jason groaned inwardly; Leo was pissed at something Thalia normally did and no one knew why but him and Piper.

"Of all the things I've said to you, Valdez, you take offence on _fire boy_?"Jason could practically taste the incredulous that toned over his sister's words and he had to admit that if he didn't know why Leo was so opposed to it all, he would have found it odd too. Despite his own inhibitions, he locked eyes with Piper and mouthed a silent plea for help.

"Just. Don't. Call. Me. That." Leo gritted his teeth, his fists clenched tightly on either side of him. If Jason hadn't known that Leo had amazingly excellent control on his power and had for years he would have been worried that he was going to explode on his sister. He could tell from the edgy looks some of the campers were giving them, they thought the same. Thalia was looking at him, shocked and if Jason wasn't currently worried about his friend exploding angrily, he would have laughed. Thalia could talk about how much she hated Leo but Jason knew that he was almost a friend to her, someone she could ridicule all she liked and would still like her at the end of the day.

"Hey guys!" Piper called out and Jason could feel his tense muscles loosen. Thank the Gods for her gift, only she (and Drew but Drew would never use it for this) could calm the entire camp down with words and her voice only. "Why don't we get back to reading, huh? It's been forever and we haven't even finished the first chapter, that's pretty bad." She smiled cheerfully as if one of her best friends wasn't about to explode on the sister of the other, possibly literally.

The entire campers dazedly agreed and even Chiron was looking a little bleary-eyed as everyone turned back to the extremely amused Apollo. "I knew coming to read this myself would be worth it," he chortled, "you demigods are just so entertaining!" he smiled brightly and then continued reading.

"—**I guess she'd gotten tired of stealing from the tourists—and dumped her half-eaten lunch in Grover's lap."**

Several people, especially the girls, stated their disgust but the discussion remained quiet as they were still being influenced by Piper's charm-speech to start a true conversation. Leo himself was back to dreamingly humming his Spanish lullaby and twisting his little female robot together.

**"Oops." She grinned at me with her crooked teeth. Her freckles were orange, as if somebody had spray-painted her face with liquid Cheetos."**

"That's an insult to the wonderful cheesy goodness that is Cheetos!" Grover stated, taking an empty bag of Cheetos from someplace Jason was sure he didn't want to know about and chewing it. Everyone else just stayed at the satyr before slowly turning back to Apollo and pretending they didn't hear him.

"**I tried to stay cool. The school counselor had told me a million times, "Count to ten, get control of your temper." But I was so mad my mind went blank. A wave roared in my ears."**

"A wave?" Annabeth suddenly scoffed, laughter clear in her eyes. "Only Percy." She shook her head amusedly and several others that were close with Percy did the same.

"**I don't remember touching her, but the next thing I knew, Nancy was sitting on her butt in the fountain, screaming, "Percy pushed me!" Mrs. Dodds materialized next to us."**

Nico suddenly sat up straighter, pale face alit with some sort of frenzied anticipation. Jason wondered if Hades looked as deranged as his son did now on a regular basis. "She saw him and knows what she did. It's high time we reached action." Annabeth looked as if nothing could be worse than finally reaching action in the story and Jason winced at her angry, biting tone.

"That means he's going to be in danger! The monster's going to try to kill him!" Jason admired Nico's bravery (or was it stupidity) for being able to stare down a suddenly overbearing, livid Annabeth. If Percy could deal with that one a daily basis, he mused as he watched the interaction, maybe there was some basis on the campers' avid adoration of him.

"Try being the key word Annabeth. We all know he doesn't get killed or have any lasting damage. So relax and enjoy the fight as it is." Nico stated back calmly, reclining on his spot of the picnic table bench as if to prove his words. Annabeth looked ready to slit his throat as he sat there but Apollo quickly began reading although Jason couldn't detect any actual sense of emergency in his words.

"**Some of the kids were whispering: "Did you see—"**

**"—the water—"**

**"—like it grabbed her—"**

"It's always creepy when Percy does that." Natalie from the Hermes cabin shuddered. Jason watched as Piper gave her an odd look.

"Why it's just water, isn't it?" she asked. Natalie shuddered delicately.

"Yeah, but it shapes itself like a gigantic hand. It's terrifying when you see a giant hand reaching from the water like Poseidon himself come to exact his revenge." Piper joined her in the light shudder and Jason himself felt more than slightly weirded out at the revelation.

"**I didn't know what they were talking about. All I knew was that I was in trouble again. As soon as Mrs. Dodds was sure poor little Nancy was okay, promising to get her a new shirt at the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mrs. Dodds turned on me. There was a triumphant fire in her eyes, as if I'd done something she'd been waiting for all semester. "Now, honey—"**

**"I know," I grumbled. "A month erasing workbooks. That wasn't the right thing to say."**

"That is never the right thing to say!" Leo blurted out from beside Jason. "I mean, even if you had a normal teacher and not some crazy Georgian monster that wants to harness your brain or something, you don't guess your punishment!" Leo berated the book and Jason was too relieved that his friend was back to normal (in relative terms) to tell him he was scolding a book.

**"Come with me," Mrs. Dodds said.**

**"Wait!" Grover yelped. "It was me. I pushed her."**

"That was brave of you," Thalia said. Jason wondered why she sounded so surprised, Grover always seemed plenty brave to him, but then again it might simply be that the fauns at home do so little anyone doing anything seemed brave.

Grover flushed. "Always the tone of surprise, always." He murmured to the laughter and amusement to the campers.

"**I stared at him, stunned. I couldn't believe he was trying to cover for me. "**

"Percy agrees with me," Thalia told Grover who flushed angrily and muttered something about children of the big three and where they could stick themselves. Jason figured it would be rather unpleasant if they were actually forced to do so.

"**Mrs. Dodds scared Grover to death. She glared at him so hard his whiskery chin trembled.**

"**I don't think so, Mr. Underwood," she said.**

**"But—"**

**"You—will—stay—here."**

**Grover looked at me desperately.**

**"It's okay, man," I told him. "Thanks for trying."  
><strong> "Percy's pretty nice, you know, even when he doesn't understand everything that's going on." A small Apollo child spoke up. Jason had no idea who it was but from his size and the way the entire camp (besides his siblings and father) seemed to struggle on who it was, he assumed the child was a new addition to Half-Blood Hill. Annabeth, to Jason's surprise, didn't smile but nervously ran her bottom lip through her teeth as she thought of an answer.

"Percy is loyal. Extremely loyal. It's actually his greatest flaw; he'd do anything for a friend. Even if that friend hates him, he'd go anywhere for them because he's determined to right them, to help them and bring them into the light. Even if it was an enemy demigod from Kronos's side of the war, he'd try to protect him, to save him from themselves. It can be fatal to him," Nico explained, surprisingly subdued. Everyone, even Jason, knew that Nico had briefly flirted with enemy lines. He'd never join Kronos, but there had definitely hated Percy, and they all knew that Percy had somehow managed to bring him back.

"Only Percy can take a good quality and turn it into a bad thing," Thalia joked, trying to break the tension that had descended on the camp. Some laughed, but most, even Thalia herself, seemed tense and alert. Jason wondered if they all thought that was why Percy went missing, to help someone that didn't want help. He realized it was probably very likely to them. He worried if the Romans had hurt him, if he was there.

**"Honey," Mrs. Dodds barked at me. "Now."**

**Nancy Bobofit smirked."**

"Okay, seriously? Is she a monster or just a mean, mean person?" Natalie from the Hermes table demanded, looking at Grover. Jason watched as Grover flushed and tried to think of an answer. "Come on Grover, yes or no? Monster or bit-"

"Hermione Nataline! Don't you dare finish that statement!" Katie Gardener shrieked at the girl. Jason jumped slightly, Katie was a sweet girl and he had never heard her raise her voice to scold let alone yell at a girl that wasn't even from her cabin. Her dark eyes slid across the older children, glaring at all of them. "She's only twelve! Where did she learn that kind of speaking?" She demanded. Several shifting shoulders and suddenly the Stoll brothers were the only ones facing the Demeter cabin. Jason winced as Katie started tearing into the two devils.

"Okay, really?" Natalie rolled her eyes at Katie, "One my name is Natalie, stop calling me by my full name, second I'm thirteen, the same age as Nico over there," she paused to put to said boy who flushed, "and third, I live in a cabin as one of the youngest kids, which means everyone around me is in their late teens, so I learn things. Plus, my mother wasn't exactly the queen of etiquette, she cursed. Now stop berating me like your my mother I swear to the gods up high I will steal and hide every single thing you own and all of your gardening tools." She turned away from the irate and over-motherly girl to turn to Grover irritably.

"Just a jerk, she was mortal though," he told her quickly. Jason didn't blame him. Natalie may look and seem different then her siblings, more like a yet unclaimed daughter of Aphrodite, but her attitude was definitely all Hermes. He wouldn't want to wake up with all his things gone either. She nodded and thanked him before turning back

"**I gave her my deluxe I'll-kill-you-later stare."**

Several people snorted at that, including Jason who was raised to value the importance of a good glare, simply because Percy had named and apparently categorized his stares which was hilarious in itself, and then add the image of a little twelve year old boy glaring in the first place and even Annabeth was giggling a bit.

"**Then I turned to face Mrs. Dodds, but she wasn't there. She was standing at the museum entrance, way at the top of the steps, gesturing impatiently at me to come on.**

**How'd she get there so fast?"**

Several people tensed, even Nico. "She's really impatient," he started slowly, turning towards Chiron, "and Percy doesn't have a weapon, are you going to leave him to himself like that?" He asked, a little angrily. Several other campers were also angrily muttering or giving Chiron sharp looks, including Jason. He, being from the Roman camp, knew well the reasons for the 'hands-off' approach of the gods and Lupa, but even the great mother-wolf wouldn't leave a boy who didn't know anything about this world defenseless. Jason, who expected the centaur to deny the claim, was surprised when he looked away.

"**I have moments like that a lot, when my brain falls asleep or something, and the next thing I know I've missed something, as if a puzzle piece fell out of the universe and left me staring at the blank place behind it. The school counselor told me this was part of the ADHD, my brain misinterpreting things."**

"I don't think that's it," Annabeth stated worriedly, torn between biting her lip and shooting angry glares at Chiron, silently telling the old centaur to do something. Everyone was tense as they listened to Percy about to have his first fight with an actual monster and despite even her greatest protests, Jason noticed Clarisse was tense, hand squeezing Chris Rodriguez's from the Hermes table hard, as she listened.

"**I wasn't so sure. I went after Mrs. Dodds."**

"He shouldn't have! Gods Percy, why are you so daft sometimes?" Annabeth shrieked shrilly, her stormy eyes wide and angry. "Why didn't you go to Chiron? Get another teacher? Something?" Annabeth was terrifying and no one bothered to correct her that this already happened and Percy had survived it.

"He thought she was just another teacher, teachers aren't supposed to hurt their students so he wasn't worried." Jason stared at Leo shocked. Annabeth _terrified _Leo when she was in such a towering anger, and here he was practically opposing her. He didn't even so much as flinch when Annabeth turned to him, eyes narrowed and hand twitching for her dagger, he just smiled, shrugged, and went back to his mechanism. Jason marveled at his friends sheer bravery (or was it stupidity?) before, like the others, returning the book. He never knew it was so hard to ignore someone death-glaring, but he was prone to fits of inattention whenever Annabeth turned to them and glared angrily. He sarcastically thanked Leo for putting him on Annabeth's hit list.

"**Halfway up the steps, I glanced back at Grover. He was looking pale, cutting his eyes between me and Mr. Brunner, like he wanted Mr. Brunner to notice what was going on, but Mr. Brunner was absorbed in his novel."**

"A novel is more important than your charge? With your inattention and Percy's blatant stupidity it's a wonder that he made it off that field trip, let alone to camp!" Not even Leo with all of his craziness and apparently diminishing self-preservation (if he had any, Jason wasn't sure) braved tempering Annabeth that time. Jason assumed they all (like him) liked having all of their internal organs to remain internal.

"**I looked back up. Mrs. Dodds had disappeared again. She was now inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall. Okay, I thought. She's going to make me buy a new shirt for Nancy at the gift shop. But apparently that wasn't the plan."**

"Of course not," Nico scoffed, "even if she was a mortal teacher, no one would make you buy a shirt from a museum gift shop, they're horrible." Everyone looked at Nico oddly. "What? They are," he shrugged at their continuous stares. "Please keep reading Lord Apollo," he requested after a bit, finally shifting uncomfortably at everyone's odd looks. "I lived by myself for quite a while, I had to wear what I could get and sometimes it was that crappy museum cloths, alright? Now let's read."

Thalia and Annabeth glared at everyone who continued to stare at Nico. If anyone knew what it was like to be a demigod on the run, Jason mused, it was those two. Very few others at the camp knew the feeling and Jason doubted they would ever want to, despite the thirst to prove themselves they all had. The reading continued after everyone was scared off by the two angry girls and a dark look from Nico.

Jason figured that even if Nico was emanating extreme power, someone whose father had the power to determine whether you'd live in paradise or be tortured forever probably wasn't messed with. He wondered if messing with a kid of Hades earned you the elusive punishment of getting sewn into Hades's underpants. Then he figured with slight horror that he was thinking like Leo and went back to listening.

"**I followed her deeper into the museum. When I finally caught up to her, we were back in the Greek and Roman section. Except for us, the gallery was empty."**

Annabeth started praying quietly that Percy would be alright and the entire camp held their breath. It would be just like a monster to attack as soon as no one else was around.

"**Mrs. Dodds stood with her arms crossed in front of a big marble frieze of the Greek gods. She was making this weird noise in her throat, like growling. Even without the noise, I would've been nervous. It's weird being alone with a teacher, especially Mrs. Dodds. Something about the way she looked at the frieze, as if she wanted to pulverize it..."**

"So observant, yet no brains to know to _get out_!" Annabeth hissed, angrily digging her nails into the table they were clamped to.

**"You've been giving us problems, honey," she said.**

**I did the safe thing. I said, "Yes, ma'am."**

"That's not the safe thing," Nico said, shaking his head. "The safe thing is to get back to the group of kids, Chiron and Grover can help you there."

"Weren't you the one that thought this would be all good fun?_ 'We all know he doesn't get killed or have any lasting damage. So relax and enjoy the fight as it is'_." She quoted angrily. Jason was surprised she had remembered that much of it. "Now you are worried?" Nico just stared at her calmly, dark eyes the only part of his face that gave away his annoyance, they were black, but a luminescent one, more like his sword than anything. It made even Jason shudder.

"That's when I thought it would happen with Chiron and Grover by him, not by himself. It's a heck of a lot more terrifying to deal with your first couple monsters by yourself than with someone to help you, you know that." Annabeth bit her lip but didn't say anything, forming a silent truce with Nico for the moment.

"**She tugged on the cuffs of her leather jacket. "Did you really think you would get away with it?" The look in her eyes was beyond mad. It was evil.**

Jason tensed as he listened. If Percy could notice that, it would mean the monster was beginning to shed its human persona; it also meant that it would attack soon and unless someone came to help Percy pretty soon, it wasn't going to look good, past or not past. All the others must have been thinking on similar lines as everyone was tensed up.

"**She's a teacher, I thought nervously. It's not like she's going to hurt me."**

"Just 'cause it's a teacher, doesn't mean they ain't gonna hurt you, monster or human." Leo said beside Jason, hands still as he finally gave his undivided attention to the book. Jason gave him an odd look but Leo just shook his head, curls flying and he had such a far away, darkened look on his face Jason knew not to ask. Leo didn't pry on his past; he wasn't going to do the same.

**I said, "I'll—I'll try harder, ma'am." Thunder shook the building.**

_Thunder, _Jason thought quietly, and then his eyes widened. He turned to look across the pavilion at his sister who was tense, one hand clenching the bench hard enough to turn white, the other on Annabeth's back to comfort her, "is this dad's doing?" he could hear the incredulity in his voice and mentally berated himself. His father was extremely strict, he highly doubted that he would hesitate to kill Percy in lieu of his father for breaking the pact, never mind that he broke it twice.

Thalia thought for a moment, "I don't think this is, not the monster anyway. I think he's noticing the storm because of dad's anger more than the monster being connected to him." No one noticed Nico's suddenly pale face as he figured who the monster was. Annabeth was going to kill him.

**"We are not fools, Percy Jackson," Mrs. Dodds said. "It was only a matter of time before we found you out. Confess, and you will suffer less pain. "I didn't know what she was talking about."**

"No one does," Travis Stoll said, surprisingly serious, "If Thalia says it's not from her dad, I don't know who she's talking about. Was something else taken on the solstice besides the lightning bolt." Annabeth's widened and she glared at Nico. Jason was surprised at the turn of events, what did Nico have to do with any of it?

"Nico…." She hissed quietly. Nico shied away from her and her itchy fingers.

"I don't know if he's involved, it's likely, after all he thought Percy had done both," Annabeth growled angrily but they stopped speaking and refused to answer any of the questions shot towards them. Jason was inwardly happy that he wasn't the only confused demigod this time. Only Grover, Annabeth, and Nico seemed to know what was going on, even Thalia was staring curiously at her friends.

"**All I could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy I'd been selling out of my dorm room. Or maybe they'd realized I got my essay on Tom Sawyer from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me read the book."**

The paragraph of Percy's mundane worries did the trick, the whole camp was cracking smiles and laughing, even Annabeth who moments ago looked like she was going to murder someone was laughing lightly at it. "Only Percy would worry about having to actually read the book," she said with a disappointed shake of her head, "it's actually pretty good if you got a mom who's willing to translate it to Ancient Greek for you." Several of the campers looked as if they greatly disagreed but Jason wondered if he could convince Minerva to translate one to Latin for him.

"I'm more interested in the candy, think he's still selling?" Travis asked Connor, who shook his head.

"His mom doesn't work at the candy shop anymore, remember? She's off writing books and marrying her English professors." Travis scowled as if by being happy, Mrs. Jackson had become a great malefaction in the demigod world. Jason sighed when he realized Leo looked the same. Sometimes he worried.

**"Well?" she demanded.**

**"Ma'am, I don't..."**

**"Your time is up," she hissed."**

Everyone tensed again, all thoughts besides wondering how Percy was getting out left them. Jason didn't even have his problems with Piper running through the back of his mind anymore, his entire being was tense, breath held along with the rest of the demigods as he awaited the fight.

"**Then the weirdest thing happened. Her eyes began to glow like barbecue coals. Her fingers stretched, turning into talons. Her jacket melted into large, leathery wings. She wasn't human. She was a shriveled hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and she was about to slice me to ribbons."**

"A kindly one…" Annabeth said slowly, deceitfully calm as she turned towards Nico who, for the first time, looked frightened of Annabeth, "Your _father _sent a kindly one after Percy before he even knew if Percy was a demigod! To watch him! And you didn't know it? Didn't warn me when we started reading?" Nico shrank back but Jason could tell from the look in his eyes he was still going to fight back. Jason doubted Nico even knew what the meaning of 'self-preservation' was.

"I wasn't sure, you are one of the only ones that knew besides me on why he would even do it in the first place and he generally doesn't mention it because Demeter likes to ridicule him about it so much, ever since Persephone accidently let it slip out when they were hiding from Kronos. So no, I didn't know that he had sent Ale- the kindly one after Percy until the bus incident, I swear," Annabeth was still angry but she seemed to be appeased by Nico's words as she turned towards Grover to question him.

Grover bleated nervously and mumbled something about it 'slipping his mind' before quickly turning towards Apollo, eyes begging the god to continue reading. The entire conversation was lost on Jason who had no idea what was going on. What was the bus incident? What did Demeter have over Hades that she enjoyed teasing him with? Would they find out in this book or not until the very end?

"**Then things got even stranger."**

Annabeth paled at that and the entire camp tensed. If one kindly one had made her appearance, could the others be hiding, waiting for the moment that their sister called out for fresh demigod blood? Jason shivered at the morbid thoughts. Everyone held their breath as they waited for Apollo to read the next line: "**Mr. Brunner," **every one released their breath but continued to tense up, Chiron being there didn't mean Percy was safe, him being in a wheelchair and still undercover probably made the chance of him killing the kindly one even less. It was still up to Percy.

"**-Who'd been out in front of the museum a minute before, wheeled his chair into the doorway of the gallery, holding a pen in his hand."**

"You have riptide, thank gods," Annabeth breathed deeply obviously relieved. Jason wondered vaguely what good a pen would do. He doubted the old expression 'then pen is mightier than the sword' was relevant in the face of a kindly one attack. Leo and Piper (his heart jumped erratically as he finally remembered their fight and his conflicting feelings) also looked confused but everyone else was obviously relieved at the sudden change. Some were even smiling excitedly and waiting for the next moment eagerly, most notably from the Ares cabin. If the entire camp wasn't a bit more relaxed, Jason would have figured it was because of the seemingly imminent demise or injury of the boy in question.

**"What ho, Percy!" he shouted, and tossed the pen through the air. Mrs. Dodds lunged at me."**

Everyone tensed again; worried the pen wouldn't get to Percy in time. Monsters weren't known for their patience and Jason doubted that even if the pen could help Percy, he could get to it before Mrs. Dodds got to him. He wondered how it was possible that Percy hadn't become mince-meat and wondered if Chiron had taken care of the kindly one himself to save Percy. It made more sense than all of this madness about a pen.

"**With a yelp, I dodged and felt talons slash the air next to my ear."**

"Thank the gods for quick-action reflex," Thalia said quietly, one hand comfortingly rubbing circles in Annabeth's back to try to ease her worry. Jason wondered if that was the only thing Thalia would ever thank the gods for; her electric blue eyes were cold and angry at the moment and she looked as if she would sooner yell at her father than truly thank him.

"**I snatched the ballpoint pen out of the air, but when it hit my hand, it wasn't a pen anymore. It was a sword—Mr. Brunner's bronze sword, which he always used on tournament day."**

_Oh, _Jason thought. He should have known that the pen would turn, after all his sword is – was also like that, turning from a golden denarii to either a spear or a sword depending on how it landed. He was glad everyone, including Leo was so absorbed into the book as he could feel his cheeks heating up warmly at having not come to that idea sooner.

"**Mrs. Dodds spun toward me with a murderous look in her eyes. My knees were jelly. My hands were shaking so bad I almost dropped the sword."**

"Now is not the time for nerves!" This surprisingly came from Piper who was staring at the book incredulously, "Swing the sword and kill that she-demon!" She told the book angrily. Jason couldn't help himself; he chuckled a bit at the whole situation. Piper and a few others turned to him, and Jason was sad to see that the anger in Piper's eyes didn't fade when she looked at him. She merely 'hmphed' and turned back to the book, a light flush on her cheeks from the outburst.

Leo swore, eyes wide slightly from the interaction, "you really did it this time, I'm impressed. You have officially pissed Princess off more than I ever did, and that includes the time that she chased me across the entire camp with her dagger, trying to kill me." Jason didn't ask Leo what he did for that one; odds are he'd already forgotten. Instead he glared at his so-called friend and told him to shut up. And no, he wasn't bitter about it, he merely wanted to keep reading. He ignored Leo's snort.

"**She snarled, "Die, honey!" And she flew straight at me."**

Annabeth and several others close to Percy closed their eyes, praying for his safety. Everyone tensed again.

"**Absolute terror ran through my body. I did the only thing that came naturally: I swung the sword."**

"It comes naturally to him?" One of the boys from the Hermes cabin asked. "That's strange," he mused. Jason watched the mixture of faces on the campers, all from the Ares table looked like they disagreed, some of the Hermes, some of Athena, very few from the Aphrodite and so on. Jason figured that it all depended on your father or mother. If your parent was a fighter, like Ares, you'd be more comfortable with weapons whereas if your parent was less of a fighter, like Aphrodite or Hermes who preferred more of the background, you'd have to learn weapons more than others did.

"**The metal blade hit her shoulder and passed clean through her body as if she were made of water. Hisss!"**

"Pretty good swing," Nico said appreciatively as everyone relaxed. No monster could survive a hit like that, not even a strong one like a kindly one. "For probably never holding a sword before in his life," Clarisse and several of her siblings grudgingly agreed while others more warm to Percy enthusiastically did so. Jason nodded his head in agreement, for a terrified twelve year old with no sword training, managing a kill shot so easily on the first try was incredible.

"Water reference is strange though," Natalie from Hermes added, "Guess it makes sense considering his daddy though," Jason wondered if thirteen year old Natalie actually called her own father that. He laughed inwardly at the thought of a god being a 'daddy'.

"**Mrs. Dodds was a sand castle in a power fan. She exploded into yellow powder, vaporized on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulfur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching me."**

"Creepy. Observant and descriptive, he must get that from his author mother," Natalie mused, "Cool, but I definitely wouldn't want to hear a scary story from him," Natalie, Jason mused, was one of the few demigods who maintained her innocence after discovering there was a world a monsters that would just love to rip her to pieces. Maybe that was why Nico, who was the same age yet worlds different, was so seemingly drawn to her.

"You wouldn't want a story, Nat?" Jason laughed with the rest of the group as Travis got backhanded by his younger, only sister.

"You deserved that one," Piper told him with a laugh as she high-fived the girl. When had they become friends? Jason surely would have noticed if Piper was hanging out with the girl, wouldn't he? Piper caught his eye and the look she gave him, a mixture of anger and sadness, told him no, he wouldn't have. He felt oddly guilty at that, and then angry that he felt guilty. He had to agree with Leo on this one – stupid confusing, conflicting women.

"**I was alone. There was a ballpoint pen in my hand. Mr. Brunner wasn't there. Nobody was there but me. My hands were still trembling. My lunch must've been contaminated with magic mushrooms or something. Had I imagined the whole thing?"**

"The mist is still controlling him," Annabeth said, surprised. "After my first monster, I saw them everywhere, why is it still confusing Percy?" She looked to Chiron who smiled slightly.

"That was my doing, I'm afraid; Percy was obviously quite powerful and needed to go to camp, but at the same time he wasn't quite ready yet and his mother was quite adamant about him staying with her until absolutely the last minute, it was probably the only selfish thing she's done in her entire life, but she didn't want him gone, and she had sacrificed so much in her life for him, I thought it unfair that I took him away because of my carelessness at not recognizing the kindly one, so I manipulated the mist so he did not realize what he had seen, I did not think he would assume someone had drugged him though." He smiled wryly at the thought.

Jason turned to the slightly grinning Leo, "You are not allowed to," he told him without preamble. Leo pouted and turned to Piper across the pavilion. Jason was reminded of young children who turned to the next parent after the initial one said no. Then he shook the odd thought from his head.

"Jason's right, you poison someone's food with hallucination drugs and I swear I'll tie you to one of the targets and let the Apollo cabin take target practice on you, got it?" Leo nodded, but pouted. Jason shot her a gratified smile, hoping for a truce but she just looked away. Leo smiled. Jason backhanded him.

"**I went back outside. It had started to rain. Grover was sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over his head. Nancy Bobofit was still standing there, soaked from her swim in the fountain, grumbling to her ugly friends. When she saw me, she said, "I hope Mrs. Kerr whipped your butt."**

"Who?" No one answered, most not knowing, Grover and Chiron simply not telling.

"**I said, "Who?"**

**"Our teacher. Duh!"**

Everyone looked to Chiron and Apollo laughed. "Sure hit the mist pretty hard on that one didn't you?" He asked good naturedly. Chiron just flushed which was a surprise, his whole torso seemed to darken slightly, reminding Jason slightly of Argus rolling his eyes, the way his entire body turned.

"**I blinked. We had no teacher named Mrs. Kerr. I asked Nancy what she was talking about. She just rolled her eyes and turned away. I asked Grover where Mrs. Dodds was."**

"And you grew more suspicious because Grover is the world's worst liar," Thalia surmised. Grover blushed and glared which only enforced the idea.

"**He said, "Who?" But he paused first, and he wouldn't look at me, so I thought he was messing with me."**

There was more chuckling at that and Grover blushed darker. Jason would have pitied him if he wasn't wrapped up in laughing himself at his sister's smug smile.

**"Not funny, man," I told him. "This is serious." Thunder boomed overhead. I saw Mr. Brunner sitting under his red umbrella, reading his book, as if he'd never moved. I went over to him.**

**He looked up, a little distracted. "Ah, that would be my pen. Please bring your own writing utensil in the future, Mr. Jackson." I handed Mr. Brunner his pen. I hadn't even realized I was still holding it."**

"Really, really good mist control," Apollo whistled appreciatively, "Guess it comes from years and years of fooling demigods. It's a shame, you are probably a great liar but you are horrid at changing subjects, old man," Chiron blushed again but didn't say anything. Jason wondered why Apollo got away with calling Chiron 'old' when he was nearly as old as western civilization itself. He figured it had something to do with being able to look twenty something old while Chiron was salt and peppered.

**"Sir," I said, "where's Mrs. Dodds?"**

**He stared at me blankly. "Who?"**

**"The other chaperone. Mrs. Dodds. The pre-algebra teacher." He frowned and sat forward, looking mildly concerned. **

**"Percy, there is no Mrs. Dodds on this trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mrs. Dodds at Yancy Academy. Are you feeling all right?"**

"See?" Apollo told them, "Grover, my lovely satyr, _that_ is how you lie." Grover blushed more and mumbled something before asking Apollo to just please keep reading. Apollo shrugged, "end of the chapter, should I keep reading?" Nearly everyone in the entire camp screamed 'yes' at him and he reopened the book. ""**Three Old Ladies Knit the Socks Of Death**" he read before stopping as Jason had stood.

"I was wondering if me and Piper can please go and speak briefly, you can continue reading we can catch up, but I really need to speak with her," he added as he saw all of the murderous glances he got at the possibility of stopping the already slow reading. "Please?" he added for Piper as she stared at him impassively. She sighed loudly before getting up and gesturing towards him.

"Ten minutes," she told him, "then I'm coming back here." Jason nodded and got up to go, but not before catching Leo's pitying, 'better you than me look' his friend sent him. He glared silently thanking him for the nonexistent support he showed him. He made his decision while reading, and now it was time to talk to Piper, and he could have used friendly advice, even if it was completely useless like Leo's probably would have been.

Bracing his shoulders he followed the already retreating form of an angry Piper, silently praying to Aphrodite that he would have mercy on him, at least for her daughter's sake then his own. He doubted she could take much more, he knew he couldn't.

* * *

><p>I'm sorry for such a long wait, but on the (slight) plus side, it's the rest of chapter one, and it's nearly double the size of the last ones! Kind of a moot point, but I hoped you enjoyed irregardless. I will try to get the chapters up a full one at a time but I also want to get them up more timely. I decided to go in order for point of views, so next will be Leo's, then Piper's, then Jason's. If you don't like that just tell me and if enough people complain, I'll change it somehow. I hope you liked it and I hope you enjoy the new year. Until next time, then.<p> 


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